Russia Joins China In Opposing Move Against Iran At UN Nuclear Board

Ayoob Entezari, who held a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Tehran’s Sharif University, died last week with some reports mentioning food poisoning as the cause of his death, Iranian and Israeli media reported on Saturday. He reportedly took part in several projects at the Yazd Institute of Technology.

The circumstances surrounding his death are shady as some people on social media say the Iranian scientist was killed and Mossad is also mentioned in some reports as being responsible but no official source has yet spoken out about his death.

The reports came a day after Iran confirmed the death of another colonel from the Quds Force, Ali Esmailzadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the second in two weeks from the unit which allegedly oversees terror operation abroad.

Iranian government and IRGC media said that Col. Esmailzadeh died “in an incident in recent days” at his home without mentioning any details after Iran International quoted sources in Iran as saying that the IRGC killed him over suspicions of espionage. Officials of the Revolutionary Guard told Esmailzadeh’s family that the reason for his death was suicide.

He was a close colleague of Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, the acting commander of the elite Qods Unit 840, who was earlier shot dead behind the wheel of his car outside his home in Tehran on May 22 by two gunmen who fled the scene on a motorbike.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News on Friday, Sharghi’s wife and two daughters said they have requested a meeting with Joe Biden "numerous times," including as recently as ten days ago, but has so far not received a response from the White House.

"Really what we would like is to sit in front of the president and tell our story and beg him — because he is the only one that can make the decision to bring Emad and the other hostages home," said Bahareh, Emad's wife.

"We really hope that the administration puts patriotism over politics and brings these Americans home," said Emad's 25-year-old daughter Ariana. 

In April, which marked four years since Sharghi’s detention, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley called on Iran to release Sharghi and stop its policy of holding people as political pawns.

The 56-year-old businessman has been sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of espionage and collecting military intelligence but had attempted to flee while on bail awaiting the result of an appeal.

Foreign governments and human rights organizations have accused Iran of detaining foreigners and dual nationals on trumped up charges to use them for getting concessions from Western countries.

The website, which takes a centrist political position, argued Iran faced a stark choice between reviving the deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – or announcing its death.

The suspension in March of Iran’s year-long negotiations with world powers in Vienna coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which complicated the situation. There have been no subsequent signs of rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

In the latest round of exchanges, the US State Department Spokesman Ned Price blamed the talks’ suspension on Tehran raising demands beyond the JCPOA. Iran has long argued that sanctions introduced by President Donald Trump – no matter whether under rubrics of ‘human rights’ or ‘terrorism’ – were designed to stymie subsequent efforts to revive the JCPOA, from which Trump withdrew the US in 2018.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has said the Biden Administration's inaction has left diplomacy in suspended animation, and that agreement over reviving the JCPOA was a simple matter of all parties honoring commitments.

With the US and the three European JCPOA signatories considering a resolution at next week’s IAEA board critical of Iran for failing to satisfy the agency over its pre-2003 nuclear work, China Thursday said such a move would undermine JCPOA negotiations. Qatar and Oman have been trying to mediate.

Iran Diplomacy website suggested that with the Vienna talks suspended, the US, France, Germany, and the United States might persuade the 35-member IAEA board “to make a political decision and issue a resolution that would send Iran's case to the UNSC [United Nations Security Council]."

‘Technical,’ and ‘political’

Qasem Mohebali, a former Iranian diplomat, told Nameh News website, that a report from IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi on the pre-2003 work, which leaked May 30, was ‘technical’ whereas any decision by the UNSC would be political. In very different circumstances in 2005-6, Iran’s expansion of its nuclear program led to a referral from the IAEA to the UNSC, which imposed multilateral sanctions with the support of both Russia and China.

Mohebali said that any IAEA board decision would be made purely on votes cast by the 35 member states, and that the outcome “depends on how US and Europe can garner support for their idea.”

Political commentator Javad Arianmanesh told Nameh News that the JCPOA was likely to fall aside. " In that case, things can become more difficult for Iran," he said. Arianmanesh argued “the most important obstacle on the way of any settlement" was the disagreement between Tehran and Washington over the US listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’

Arianmanesh argued that the “fate of the country’s economy” depended on lifting US sanctions, and that “the longer the suspension of the talks continues” the more difficult “everything” would be for Iran.

A former political prisoner and civil rights activist, Arash Sadeghi, said in a tweet on Thursday that the guillotine machine arrived at the prison about a month ago and was installed at the infirmary to carry out such sentences. 

According to Sadeghi, the man whose fingers were cut off on Tuesday had been transferred from the Kermanshah prison to carry out the sentence.

He added that three other prisoners convicted of robbery, namely Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharafian, and Mehdi Shahivand, have been transferred from the Orumiyeh prison in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan to Evin to carry out their amputation sentences. 

According to Islamic Sharia law, punishment for theft can be amputation of fingers or hands.

The three prisoners have spent five years waiting for their sentence to be carried out.

Human rights organization Amnesty International had previously condemned the move to “deliberately mutilate and traumatize prisoners through unspeakably cruel judicial corporal punishments.”

Their trial was grossly unfair and relied on “confessions” which the men have said were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment while they were detained, without access to their lawyers, Amnesty said in December 2020. 

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, deplored the move, describing the procedure as “barbaric and medieval.”

The hardliner cleric, who is the Friday prayer Imam of the city, said on Friday that a troubled young man in his 20s ambushed him from behind after the prayers, adding that he was hit on the neck, but it was nothing serious and he was not hurt.

Tabatabai-Nejad said the assailant, whose identity was not announced, was arrested immediately and his motives are being investigated. Iranian media say that the cleric suffered minor injuries.

People on social media said the man attacked the cleric with a metal object.

In 2020, Tabatabai-Nejad said society must become unsafe for women with loose-fitting hijabs. Similar calls for crackdown on those who fail to comply with compulsory hijab sparked a series of acid attacks on women in Esfahan in 2014.

Earlier in the year, a member of the Assembly of the Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, Mohammad Taghi Fazel Meybodi, said that clerics and seminary students are avoiding their usual garb for fear of being insulted in public, adding that the people in Iran have a negative view of the clergy, and blame them for the current hardships they experience, including high prices and corruption.

Another well-known cleric, Mohammad-Reza Zaeri, also talked about the growing hatred and grudge towards the clergy in January, warning of a crisis unfolding in society.